Scientific Americans : the making of popular science and evolution in early-twentieth-century U.S. literature and culture / John Bruni.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bruni, John.

Series:

Intersections in literature and science

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.

Evolution in literature.

Literature and science--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and science.

United States.

History.

Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882--Influence.

Darwin, Charles.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Physical Description:

viii, 246 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cardiff : University of Wales Press, [2014]

Summary:

Demonstrating the timely relevance of Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Jack London and Henry Adams, this book shows how debates about evolution, identity, and a shifting world picture have uncanny parallels with the emerging global systems that shape our own lives. Tracing these systems' take-off point in the early twentieth century through the lens of popular science journalism, John Bruni makes a valuable contribution to the study of how biopolitical control over life created boundaries among races, classes, genders and species. Rather than accept that these writers get their scientific ideas about evolution second-hand, filtered through a social Darwinist ideology, this study argues that they actively determine what evolution means. Furthermore, the book, examines the ecological concerns that naturalist narratives reflect - such as land and water use, waste management, and environmental pollution - previously unaddressed in a book-length study. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Popular Science, Evolution and Global Information Management 11

I Reconstructing the social and scientific 11

II Scientific and cultural narratives of expansion 16

III Information and control systems 25

IV Historicizing science 28

2 Dirty Naturalism and the Regime of Thermodynamic Self- Organization 31

I Social regulation and the power of art 34

II Self-organization and energy flows 45

III Ecocriticism and thermodynamics 49

IV Social work and moral parasites 53

3 The Ecology of Empire 59

I The Call of the Wild and the national frontier 62

II Wild Fang and the ideology of domestication 72

III The multiplicity of animal bodies 76

IV Ghosts of American citizens 82

V Where to draw the line? Biological kinship and legal discourse 90

4 After the Flood: Performance and Nation 93

I Managing life 95

II Business morality and Western water policy 101

III 'Constitutional restlessness' and 'something not ourselves' 104

IV Systems of art: perception and communication 113

V Pure fiction 119

5 The Miseducation of Henry Adams: Fantasies of Race, Citizenship and Biological Dynamos 121

I Evolution as historical process 124

II Thermodynamics and citizenship 130

III The new American as techno-subject 135

IV Beyond evolution: information, control and paranoia 142

V 'The Rule of Phase Applied to History' 145

VI A Letter to American Teachers of History' 148.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [225]-238) and index.

ISBN:

9781783160174

1783160179

OCLC:

879893666